Posted by floatingbridge on November 8, 2011, at 13:32:53
In reply to Re: Chris Hedges' column today » floatingbridge, posted by sigismund on November 7, 2011, at 21:22:42
I wonder what that is from. I was think about McCarthy as I was reading Hedges and then the column you posted. His last book, The Road, was grueling. But it ended on hope, oddly enough. The family the boy ended up with did not cannibalize ("I can't") and ended with the mother figure gathering the boy to her. Love was still alive.
There is an end similar in The Grapes of Wrath.
Chris Hedges spoke with three older women in Yugoslavia.
They were old friends who watched out for each other through the years, two Serbs and a Muslim. One said, the war began with words. They also said we all felt the same
pangs in childbirth. We do not believe in war.The point is not that women are special. It is that they were rooted to being parents as any man or woman could be. As the father in The Road was. They are rooted to each other and committed to loving something. Hedges says such love for another person can inculcate against the insanity of rhetoric.
You might imagine I need very much to believe in something.
I went into a local pharmacy/market today and the loudspeaker played non-stop advertising, informing people how to save more money if they spent more money using their special store card. It is almost never quiet anymore. Silence is a form of blasphemy. It is a waste of good commercial airspace.
There is a book called "Indian Tales".
http://www.amazon.com/Indian-Tales-Jamie-Angulo/dp/0865475237
It is based on the tales of the Indians in my area. The stories are wonderful and absolutely free of self-pity. The gods are tricksters and also beneficent and so are people and the people are related to the animals and the animals are gods and everyone has a good time playing gambling games. What comes around goes around without a hint or meanness only playful irony. It is refreshing and a break from this sort of naturalized sturm und drang prevalent in the Western world.
Sorry. Very long winded. Happens when I read a lot and spend my time with a seven year old. Our conversations are delightful (though yesterday I placed a moratorium on 'why' to which he cleverly started asking 'how come' and then asked what's a moratorium...).
Be well.
I dig a pony.
poster:floatingbridge
thread:1001838
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20110926/msgs/1001912.html